Education
EDUCATION IS A HUMAN RIGHT - a right which we are ethically obliged to provide for each other.
The right to education is itself nested in other human rights such as the right to live in health,without struggling in poverty and the right to an education which is free from violence and free from discrimination – not only gender-based discrimination and injustice but ethnic economic, cultural, and social forms of discrimination. Yet, until today, education remains one of the most pressing, unmet aims of the United Nations' Millenium Development Goals.
Consider:
- More than 100 million children have no access to primary schooling;
- More than 960 million adults, two-thirds of whom are women, are illiterate, and functional illiteracy is a significant problem in all countries, industrialized and developing;
- More than one-third of the world's adults have no access to the printed knowledge, new skills and technologies that could improve the quality of their lives and help them shape, and adapt to, social and cultural change; and
- More than 100 million children and countless adults fail to complete basic education programmes; millions more satisfy the attendance requirements but do not acquire essential knowledge and skills.
Majority of those denied access are women
Two thirds of all those who have no access to education are girls and women and
an estimated 100 million do not complete primary education, often because its quality is poor and their opportunities are far from equal to those of boys .
More than 542 million women are illiterate, many as a result of inadequate or incomplete schooling. Lack of literacy is generally associated with poverty and discrimination.